Jo Goodman (34 page)

"What about you?" Decker asked.

"Me?"

"Do you intend to maintain the pretense of faithfulness?"

"I intend to be faithful," she said.

Decker touched the bottom of her mug and encouraged her to drink some more broth. "But you'll look the other way when I have affairs?"

"It shouldn't matter where I look," she explained. "The idea is for you to be so discreet about it that I will never know one way or the other."

"So even if I were faithful to our vows, you'd merely assume I was very good at planning and carrying out my trysts."

Jonna's brow furrowed. She glanced at him sideways, uncertain.

"Clearly you hadn't considered that possibility. You can see it puts me in something of a double bind. I'm damned in your eyes no matter what I do."

"I was only trying to consider what you might want," she said. Jonna took another swallow of the hot broth. Decker was watching her oddly, looking more through her than at her. There was a glimmer of a smile lifting one corner of his mouth. It was making her stomach turn over in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

"What do you know about what I want, Jonna?"

Chapter 10

She could only stare at him.

Her silence satisfied Decker. "That's what I thought," he said finally, softly. "You don't know anything about what I want."

Caught by his direct, encompassing gaze, Jonna felt a ribbon of heat uncurl in her middle. It slowly flushed her complexion, starting at her breasts and rising up her throat to her cheeks. Dazed, she blinked owlishly. "The room is spinning," she whispered, not taking her eyes from his.

Decker touched her check with his fingertips. There was amusement in his voice. "Is that right?"

Jonna nodded.

"Perhaps you should lie back." He took the tray from her lap and put it aside. When he turned toward her again she was still sitting in the same position. Her lips were damp, slightly parted, and there appeared to be a breath caught in her throat. He covered her mouth with his and stole it away.

Decker told himself he wasn't entirely breaking his own promise. This kiss was merely a prompting, a gesture to remind her of what it was she had once wanted from him and what they had once shared. He had no intention of it becoming anything other than a kiss.

Then she responded. He swallowed her breathy little sigh. Her damp lips moved under his. She drew in his lower lip and ran her tongue along the sensitive underside. He felt her lean into him as she shifted position. Her hands came up to hover just above his shoulders, stayed there a moment, then finally gripped him. She seemed to need him for purchase and balance.

It was not so different from her need for him on
Huntress.
That's what Decker told himself when he felt her breasts pressed to his chest. He had steadied her there when the ship had pitched and tilted. It was no more than she wanted from him in her bed.

Jonna's breasts ached deeply. It wasn't enough for her body to be flush with his, not when her shift and his shirt separated them. Her hands slipped under Decker's jacket and pushed it away from his shoulders. With no more encouragement than that, she felt Decker shrug out of it. Jonna murmured her pleasure against his mouth. Without breaking the kiss, her fingers went to the first button of his shirt and slipped it free. She did another, then another, until the opening was wide enough for her to lay one hand flat against his chest. His skin was warm, and his heartbeat thrummed steadily under her hand. She said Decker's name against his lips and felt his response in the heart of her palm.

Jonna lay back and brought Decker with her. The weight of him against her secured and comforted. Until that moment Jonna had no idea that she desired either of those things or that they would heighten her pleasure. Her hands slipped around his back and she held him there, running her fingertips along the length of his spine.

Decker's knee pushed at the blankets that cocooned the lower half of Jonna's body. Beneath them, he felt her respond to the pressure of his knee by opening for him. A fleeting thought, only half-formed in his mind, warned him it was just as well the blankets were there. Inwardly he cursed the obstacle, outwardly he groaned.

Pushing against the bed, Decker raised himself on his elbows and looked down at Jonna. Her lips remained parted, the line of them slightly swollen and berry red. Her complexion was beautifully flushed and her eyes, when she opened them, were dark with the strength of her desire.

She blinked. A fringe of dark hair had fallen forward over Decker's brow. Without thinking Jonna pushed it back, the gesture at once intimate and tender. Her fingertips grazed his temple, then his ear, and finally came to rest lightly on the curve of his neck. An odd thought occurred to her: It was the middle of the afternoon.

"Yes," Decker said, amused. "It is."

Until he spoke Jonna hadn't realized she'd given her thought a voice. It had been easy, with her eyes closed, to believe she was making love to him under the cover of darkness. More disconcerting to Jonna was the discovery that with her eyes open nothing changed. The way he was looking at her now, with that calm and searching and frank regard, made her glad she could see him, too.

She glanced away, unable to hold his eyes. "If you want..."

Decker waited. When she didn't go on he bent his head and touched her mouth lightly with his own. "If I want what, Jonna?"

It would not be an easy thing to say the words aloud, Jonna realized. The directness with which she handled most matters of business failed her now. She laced her fingers behind his neck and urged him forward. "This," she said huskily. "If you want this."

The muscles in Decker's neck stiffened as he resisted Jonna's pressure. He saw her surprise in the moment before he extended his elbows and pushed himself away. Sitting up, he put his legs over the side of the bed and stood. He picked up his jacket from where it lay on the edge of the mattress and slipped it on. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jonna's gaze stray to his groin. He did not button the jacket or make any move to hide his body's response.

"From now on," he said quietly, "it has to be what you want."

Then he left her alone.

* * *

Mrs. Davis opened the door to Jonna's room quietly and poked her head through. Her brow creased in consternation when she didn't see her employer in bed.

"It's all right," Jonna called from the window seat. "You may come in." She set aside her book with no care to finding her place again. It was an acknowledgment to herself that she had only been pretending to read it anyway. "I'm glad you're here. I imagine we have a lot to discuss."

Nodding, the housekeeper stepped into the room. "But that's not why I've come," she said. "Captain Thorne urged me to assure myself of your welfare."

"Ah," Jonna said quietly. She could not credit Decker with good intentions, not when he had left her so abruptly just above an hour ago. The taste of him lingered on her mouth and there was still a heavy fullness in her breasts. He had kissed her with no intention of finishing what he'd started. What had occurred between them had only been for his amusement, not his satisfaction. She would not easily forget his parting words:
From now on it has to be what you want.
Jonna did not think he was being gracious or considerate. In her mind there could not have been a clearer demonstration that his deeper feelings were not engaged. He could take or leave her. He might say that the decision was hers, but the terms were really his.

It had been that way since she had gone to his room at Rosefield. On that occasion she had been foolish enough to imagine she could arrange intimacy between them like she arranged any other matter of business. Somehow Decker had been able to alter the nature of their liaison, turning her proposition into a proposal. Nothing had been as she wanted it since.

"Where is my husband?" Jonna asked. Heat rose in her cheeks as she heard the question. There was a certain proprietary air in her tone that she was suddenly aware of and certain she didn't like. In the far recesses of her mind she heard the faint echo of Decker's voice.
I can't own you, Jonna. Can I?
More strongly she heard his second demand.
Give me
Huntress.
Prove you know you can't own me.

Jonna lightly touched her throat and cleared it. "I mean, where is Captain Thorne?"

Mrs. Davis looked at her oddly. "The captain went back to the harbor. I don't believe he said what business took him there, not that he should explain himself to me."

"He probably told me," Jonna said. She rubbed her temples. "I'm afraid I was rather groggy for a while."

"Of course you were," Mrs. Davis said solicitously. "Is there anything I can get you?"

Jonna shook her head. "No, but I'd like it if you'd sit with me. We need to talk about how we shall go on from here. Decker's presence will make things more difficult, though I shouldn't think impossible. It will not be so easy as when he was staying in the house before. I can't very well ask him to take his room in another wing."

Mrs. Davis chuckled at that notion, but her laughter faded suddenly as another thought occurred to her. "You haven't told him?"

Although Jonna had been expecting the question, she hadn't considered how she wanted to answer it or how much of an explanation she wanted to make. "No," she said finally, simply. "I haven't told him."

Mrs. Davis turned a wing chair away from the fireplace and toward Jonna. She sat down slowly. Her eyes were grave as she pondered the problems this presented. "Do you have any intention of telling him?" she asked after a moment.

"No." Jonna glanced out the window briefly. The sun ducked behind a cloud and a shadow crossed her face. Fingers of icy air lifted an eddy of snowflakes off the stone balustrade below her. "Not at this time," she said. "Not at any time soon."

"I see," the housekeeper said slowly. It was clear from her tone that she didn't see at all. More than that, she didn't approve.

"The girls must be told they can't say anything to him."

"I'll speak to them before he returns from the harbor. I'm sure nothing has been said to give us away. There hasn't been time."

"I agree." She turned back to Mrs. Davis. "I've already seen Amanda. She brought in my tray. And Delores came in to assist me with my clothes before Decker dismissed her. That's two. How many others are there?"

"Five," she replied. "Three that you know. Two that arrived since you've been gone. No one's left. I've been hard pressed to find enough work for all of them, what with you being gone and the regular staff needing to be kept busy as well."

"Then Rachael's still here?"

"Yes. I'm afraid the girl's somewhat attached herself to me. I don't know that she'll want to move on."

"Her hand?" asked Jonna. "How has it fared?"

"It's healed better than you or I could have hoped for. Mr. Sheridan made certain that Dr. Hardy checked it from time to time."

"Grant? He's been here?"

Mrs. Davis flinched slightly at Jonna's tone. "Why, yes," she said somewhat defensively. "I hadn't thought you would mind. Have I done something wrong?"

Jonna rushed to assure her. "No, not at all." But the truth was, she wasn't sure. "What was Grant's purpose in coming here?"

"I believe he simply wanted to know if I had heard anything from you. Mr. Sheridan was really very kind. Knowing that you left so quickly, he always inquired if there was anything he could do to assist me. I assume it was his way of asking if I had enough money to maintain the house. I assured him Mr. Quincy was seeing to everything. And he was especially thoughtful to Rachael. I think he was much struck by her crippled hand."

"He didn't suggest taking her to one of his abolitionist meetings, did he?"

"No," Mrs. Davis said. "I can't imagine that such a thing would have occurred to him."

Jonna remembered very well that it had crossed his mind. She was only thankful that he hadn't acted on the idea behind her back. "Did he notice the addition of the new girls in my absence?"

"I don't believe so. At least not that he mentioned. There was really no opportunity for him to see them. He was never here very long."